


Vestiges

by cupiscent



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-08
Updated: 2008-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not even the Pope could remain innocent while being Chuck Bass's best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vestiges

**Author's Note:**

> More pre-slash than the real deal.

Fifteen years old, walking into Chuck's suite: "you're _late_, Nathaniel" and his voice did something weird on the 'h' in Nate's name, curiosity answered when Nate looked up from the doorknob, excuse on his lips but sucked away along with his breath.

Chuck - eyes glimmering, mouth snagged open on air - sandwiched between two girls (luscious hair, shining satin, miles of legs). Hands in his hair and under his shirt and pressed over the front of his trousers.

"Sorry!" Nate yelped, fumbling with the door.

Only getting it three inches open before a hand hit it over his shoulder (certain, short-nailed, Chuck's). "Hey," said a voice in his ear (certain, lazy, Chuck's). The other hand on Nate's shoulder. "Hey," he said again. "We have plans."

"You're..." Nate twitched his head, the word _busy_ sticking in his throat.

"_We're_," Chuck said, forehead knocking above Nate's ear, breath warm against Nate's neck, and Nate hadn't known what to think - hadn't been _able_ to think - since opening the door. "Sorry we started without you." He was grinning, Nate could tell it from his voice even if he couldn't see the dark slice of it in his peripheral vision. "Got one of them for you."

_Got one?_ Nate thought if it were possible to die of embarrassment... well, this probably wouldn't have been the first time Chuck had killed him. Embarrassment and anger and bewilderment and a little envy, all bundled together and labelled _Chuck being Chuck_ and it's enough to make him let go of the door handle (the door clicking shut beneath Chuck's palm) and turn enough (Chuck edging back) to glare. _I don't need your help_, he thought, but he said, "I don't want..."

Chuck was thoroughly rumpled, shirt buttons undone, draped off Nate's shoulder with a faint frown creasing his forehead. "Are you gay?"

Later, Nate would remember - would _dwell on_ \- the way he asked that. Not denigration, not even a demand, idle and indolent in classic Bass style. As though this wouldn't be an issue, he was just curious, just wanted to be a good host; would get Nate a male hooker next time, if that were so.

"No!" Nate said, too loud, and looked over his shoulder at the girls, Chuck's hand slipping up the side of his neck as he turned. They were standing with their arms around each other's waists, heads tilted together. A redhead with the sort of sharpness in her knowing smile that always turned Chuck's head, and a blonde with legs as long as eternity.

So no, Nate wasn't a virgin. Hadn't been one before that one slippery, fumbling, unforgettable moment with Serena. (Leggy blondes. Always his downfall.) Hadn't been saving himself for Blair's carefully hoarded purity, and maybe that made him a bad person, but no one - not the Pope, not the fucking Dalai Lama - could remain innocent while being Chuck Bass's best friend.

That had been the first time he'd seen Chuck screw a girl. The blonde (Kelly? Katie? He really should have remembered) had Nate straddled on the couch, slowly scrambling his brain with the rocking rhythm of her hips. He grunted, he babbled, and she smirked, tilting his head back with red-manicured nails to suck at his neck. That left Nate looking at the bed, and on the bed, Chuck bracing himself with one arm over the writhing redhead as he fucked her implacably. His whole body undulated with each thrust; he tilted his head down to say something (_come on_, Nate's brain told him, from the movement of his lips). Nate blinked, and Chuck was looking at him.

He closed his eyes. Arched his back. Came hard and gasping, pressing his thumbs into the blonde's thighs.

The first time he'd seen Chuck screw a girl. By no means the last. He's starting to lose count (partly because he doesn't care to keep a record). Finding him at party-leaving time in the bathroom or an upstairs bedroom or a shadowed corner of the garden, Chuck's smirk over her shoulder and her legs around his waist. Staring at the windows of the limosine, dazzled and hypnotised by the passing lights and the reflection of bared skin. And more often, most often, so often it sometimes seems the natural order of things, lying on Chuck's couch, asleep or awake, too far gone... The girls changed; Chuck remained ever the same.

Always and ever the same in the late night, that night, the girls gone (paid and gone) and the two of them sitting in the bathroom, tiles deliciously cool against Nate's skin and the world fuzzed and blurred inside his skull.

"My boy," Chuck purred, teasing the joint from between his knuckles. "All grown up."

"Shut the fuck up," Nate demanded. His heel squeaked against the floor and his head slipped sideways against Chuck's bare shoulder, Chuck's laughter reverberating against his ear and his knuckles grazed Nate's cheek and for a moment...

For a moment. A moment he's never been able to define, and never been able to forget.

He remembers it yet again one day as they meander in the Park, school ties and Chuck's ridiculous scarf, nothing much and the sweet smoke of Nate's latest purchase in the air. Nate's forgotten what they're talking about, but he remembers again that moment - _that_ moment - like a flash, as Chuck says, "You are _entitled_," dragging the joint away from his smirk and passing it back.

Nate takes it in a tangle of fingers, blinks slow, and figures these are the side-effects of being Chuck Bass's best friend.


End file.
